[Commlist] CfP – NECSUS Spring 2022_#Rumors

NECSUS
Spring 2022_#Rumors
Call for submissions
guest edited by Nicholas Baer (University of Groningen) and Maggie 
Hennefeld (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)

Did you hear? Rumor has it that the Spring 2022 issue of NECSUS will be 
devoted to the topic of gossip as a prolific yet contested form of media 
discourse. Spread the word!

As Mladen Dolar has recently argued, rumors are undignified in the 
history of philosophy, falling under the ancient Greek category of doxa 
(belief, opinion) rather than episteme (knowledge, logos). Concerning 
people who are absent or at a remove, rumors are often authorless and 
unfounded, and yet they can gain enormous traction, authority, and 
staying power. In this regard, they play a significant and highly 
complex role in what Erving Goffman called ‘impression management’ as 
part of the dramaturgy of everyday social interaction.

This special section invites consideration of the non-traditional 
sources of knowledge that have gained increasing currency in film and 
media studies, challenging the empirical standards of evidence that 
informed the discipline’s ‘historical turn’. We encourage topics and 
modes of engagement that might be deemed speculative, unsubstantiated, 
or otherwise unscientific, confronting elisions and erasures in the 
archive. Of particular interest is work in Black, feminist, queer, and 
trans media studies as well as scholarship on celebrity, fandom, and 
counterpublics.

The topic of rumors and gossip is also lent vital urgency by the #MeToo 
movement. Existing outside of official accounts and professional 
historiography, whisper networks have served as key sites for 
communicating stories of rape and abuse, even as their truth-claims pose 
a crisis of documentation and verifiability. Here we are interested in 
the ambivalence and political promiscuity of gossip in relation to the 
Foucauldian power/knowledge complex: while rumors serve as a crucial 
resource for the vulnerable, they can also be a means of baseless, 
malevolent slander, leaving power structures in place and contributing 
to an often-exploitative, profit-driven culture of scandal and outrage.

Finally, this special section will examine rumors and gossip as 
linguistic utterances and modes of address that are transmitted and 
often amplified through historically variable media forms. Gossip has 
repeatedly been ignored or dismissed by linguists and philosophers, 
reduced to what Martin Heidegger deemed Gerede (idle talk). Yet various 
thinkers have argued that it serves an essential function in social 
interaction, involving group membership, moral judgment, and relations 
of trust and confidentiality. Building on existing scholarship, this 
section hopes to reassess rumors and gossip in relation to current 
issues in film and media studies, including digital networks, the viral 
spread of (mis)information, and renegotiations of the distinction 
between publicity and privacy.

Contributions may focus on but are not limited to the following topics:

# Conceptual clarifications: What are the relations and differences 
between terms such as rumors, gossip, hearsay, slander, calumny, and 
scandal?

# Historiographical challenges: How does one research and write the 
history of film and media in the face of informal networks, material 
gaps, irreducible ambiguities, and unverified or unauthorised information?

# Theories and methods: Which theoretical and methodological approaches 
are especially generative for the epistemology of rumors and gossip?

# Stardom and reception studies: What role does the rumor mill play in 
celebrity and fan communities as well as in the formation of alternative 
histories, identities, and public spheres?

# MeToo: How do rumors and gossip serve as sites for sharing stories of 
sexual violence and abuse, and what are their potentialities, 
limitations, and dangers as means of resistance to hegemonic narratives 
and institutional power structures?

# Media figurations: How have film and other media visualised, 
thematised, and participated in the production and circulation of 
knowledge and (mis)information?

# Democracy and civil society: What insights can film and media scholars 
contribute to ongoing debates about social media, the viral spread of 
falsehoods and conspiracy theories, and other challenges to democracy 
and civil society?

Please send abstracts of 300 words, 3-5 bibliographic references, and a 
short biography of 100 words to (g.decuir /at/ aup.nl) 
<mailto:(g.decuir /at/ aup.nl)> by 30 April 2021. On the basis of selected 
abstracts, writers will be invited to submit full manuscripts 
(6,000-8,000 words, revised abstract, 4-5 keywords) by 1 February 2022. 
Manuscripts will subsequently go through a double-blind peer review 
process before final acceptance for publication.


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